Holders for long slender implements such as pencils, pens and the like are well known and widely used.
The following United States patents are known to relate to this art:
______________________________________ 1,478,880 - Otterbein 3,579,820 - White 168,491 - Alvarez 3,983,620 - Barry 2,802,250 - Klotz 5,066,154 - Renaud 3,212,146 - Morgan 5,140,723 - Genzel 3,429,450 - Lambert ______________________________________
While each of the patents listed above constitutes an advance in the art, most describe a holder which suffers from the disadvantage of being designed to accommodate a slender implement such as a pencil having a specific or standard diameter. Those holders are therefore limited in their usefulness because pens and pencils come in a variety of shapes and sizes. A holder described in the patents listed above which is not designed to accommodate a specific diameter of writing implement is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,429,450 to Lambert. That holder suffers from the disadvantage of being useful only when retained in a horizontal orientation.
Another exception to the rule described above is U.S. Pat. No. 3,597,820 to white which describes a writing implement holder capable of accommodating slender implements of various diameters. The disadvantage of the writing implement holder described by white being that it is complicated and expensive to manufacture and therefore limited in its appeal.